This invention relates generally to gaming and vending printers and more specifically to gaming and vending printers performing promotional coupon printing.
The gaming machine manufacturing industry provides a variety of gaming machines for the amusement of gambling players. An exemplary gaming machine is a slot machine. A slot machine is an electro-mechanical game wherein chance or the skill of a player determines the outcome of the game. Slot machines are usually found in casinos or other more informal gaming establishments.
Gaming machine manufacturers have more recently introduced cashless enabled gaming machines to the market and these have begun to find wide acceptance in the gaming industry. Cashless enabled gaming machines are so named because they can conduct financial exchanges using a mixture of traditional currencies and vouchers. Typically, a cashless enabled gaming machine has a gaming printer to produce vouchers and a bill acceptor that supports automatic reading of vouchers. To coordinate the activities of multiple cashless enabled gaming machines, one or more cashless enabled gaming machines may be electronically coupled to a cashless enabled gaming machine system that controls the cashless operations of a cashless enabled gaming machine.
When a player cashes out using a cashless enabled gaming machine coupled to a cashless enabled gaming machine system, the cashless enabled gaming machine signals the system and the system may determine the type of pay out presented to the player. Depending on the size of the pay out, the cashless enabled gaming machine system may cause the cashless enabled gaming machine to present coins in the traditional method of a slot machine, or the cashless enabled gaming machine system may cause a gaming printer in the cashless enabled gaming machine to produce a voucher for the value of the pay out. The voucher may then be redeemed in a variety of ways. For example, the voucher may be redeemed for cash at a cashier's cage or used with another cashless enabled gaming machine. In order to use the voucher in a cashless enabled gaming machine, the voucher is inserted into a bill acceptor of another cashless enabled gaming machine at a participating casino and the cashless enabled gaming machine system recognizes the voucher, redeems the voucher, and places an appropriate amount of playing credits on the cashless enabled gaming machine.
Cashless enabled gaming machines have found an increasing acceptance and use in the gaming industry with players who enjoy the speed of play and ease of transporting their winnings around the casino and the casinos who have realized significant labor savings in the form of reduced coin hopper reloads in the games, and an increase in revenue because of the speed of play. This increasing acceptance practically guarantees a wide installed base of networked games with captive player audiences for issuance of coupons and promotional tickets using generally the same equipment already installed within a cashless enabled gaming machine system for the purpose of supporting cashless gaming vouchers. In addition, vending machine manufacturers have increasingly added additional printing features to their vending machines.